Saturday, March 08, 2014

World's most expensive city~

Now, while I see people ranting on and on about this news, I didn't felt the same way as them. I actually felt okay with this news. In fact, I appreciate this report even more after writing this entry! hahas.

Now I'm going to bore you with why I think this report is not all bad news for Singaporeans...

1. Why do they survey and publish this report? What is the purpose of this report?
It's always important to know why. Why would anyone spend time collecting information just to rank cities? For fun? Of cause not!

This report is sold to companies for them to refer to when they need to use it to decide the allowance for their staff when they relocate them to other countries.

How is this awesome news to Singaporeans?
While everyone is complaining that Singapore has too many FT taking up high ranking jobs here, this report would help foreign companies not want to relocate too many people here! Sending staffs to the most expensive city = allocate more allowance. So is this still bad news to you? ;P

2. Whose expenses are being surveyed? What are the items chosen to define cost of living?
Totally lifted this paragraph. :P "400 individual prices across 160 products and services. These include food, drink, clothing, household supplies and personal care items, home rents, transport, utility bills, private schools, domestic help and recreational costs.

Now unless your children attend private school all the way without any form of subsidy at all and stay in a rented apartment probably in an uptown area, eats only at restaurants, doesn't take public transport at all, only shops luxury brands, then yeah of cause your cost of living is going to be really high! I'm pretty sure this survey didn't pick up hawker food, pasa malam, public transport and queuing for hello kitty as recreation. :P

3. When is this survey recorded?
When SGD is strong, and you convert the item costs to another currency, it makes our expenses seems a lot more costly. Not that our expenses are low, but it does makes it look even higher. The opposite is true, the reason why Japan's ranking dropped was due to the fact that Japanese Yen dropped too! Which is why so many people are going overseas to shop now right? :P